Tuxedo (Transactions for Unix, Extended for Distributed Operations) is a middleware platform widely used to manage distributed transaction processing in distributed computing environments. It is a proven platform for unlocking enterprise legacy applications and extending them to a services oriented architecture, while delivering unlimited scalability and standards-based interoperability.
Web services are a set of functions packaged into a single entity that is available to other systems on a network, and can be shared by and used as a component of distributed Web-based applications. The network can be a corporate intranet or the Internet. Other systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, order-processing systems, and other existing back-end applications, can call these functions to request data or perform an operation. Because Web services rely on basic, standard technologies which most systems provide, they are an excellent means for connecting distributed systems together.
The software industry has evolved toward loosely coupled service-oriented applications that interact dynamically over the Web. The applications break down the larger software system into smaller modular components, or shared services. These services can reside on different computers and can be implemented by vastly different technologies, but they are packaged and accessible using standard Web protocols, such as XML and HTTP, thus making them easily accessible by any user on the Web.
Web services are defined to share the following properties that make them easily accessible from heterogeneous environments:                Web services are accessed using widely supported Web protocols such as HTTP.        Web services describe themselves using an XML-based description language.        Web services communicate with clients (both end-user applications or other Web services) through simple XML messages that can be produced or parsed by virtually any programming environment or manually, if necessary.        
Major benefits of Web services include: Interoperability among distributed applications that span diverse hardware and software platforms; Easy, widespread access to applications using Web protocols; A cross-platform, cross-language data model (XML) that facilitates developing heterogeneous distributed applications.
SOAP is the most common Web Services protocol currently in use. While SOAP 1.1 is widely adopted for web service on the Internet, SOAP 1.2 is the first formal standard for web service. It is a significant advance over SOAP 1.1. SALT will support most features of SOAP 1.2 specification.
Summary of related SOAP 1.2 features:                SOAP Roles and SOAP Node        Processing SOAP Header        Processing SOAP Body        SOAP Versioning Model        SOAP Fault        SOAP MEP (Request/Response and One-Way)        SOAP HTTP Binding (POST Method)        SOAP RPC/Encoded and Document/Literal encoding style        